In the era of the selfie, there is no shortage of apps that can swap your face on someone else’s face or make you better looking.

Lately, a new AI selfie app called FaceApp has taken over the internet by its AI-powered photo editing features. This viral selfie app can change users’ faces to match the expressions, change gender, or swap faces with someone else.

One Million in Just Two Weeks…

Faceapp online, which was initially available only for Apple iPhones had reached one million downloads in two weeks. In addition, the app also reached #1 on the top free list in six territories, and #1 in the photo category across 9 countries, according to CEO and founder of Face app, Yaroslav Goncharov.

However, they also launched Android version of Faceapp in February 2017. Goncharov told that the app took some time to release the Android version because they were making sure that the servers could first handle the iOS load.

According to Russian developer Wireless Lab, FaceApp uses neural networks technology which is a machine learning method to modify the faces users upload. The remote backend servers perform all the heavy crunching, and the app tries to keep modified images looking realistic.

Though, despite the fact that app has become viral in just two weeks of launch, the app has received mixed reviews on the Apple App Store.

In fact, recently the FaceApp has been branded as racist after its “hot mode” lightened people’s skin and enlarged their eyes.

One App Store reviewer who gave FaceApp one star wrote, “Why is the option to make yourself look hot actually a filter to change your skin tone, is this to say that black people aren’t hot?”

In addition, users have also been sharing evidence on Twitter of what happens when people of color select FaceApp’s Hot filter. In many cases, the filter just re-skinned users’ faces.

While the underlying AI tech powering FaceApp’s effects includes code from some open-source libraries, such as Google’s TensorFlow, FaceApp CEO said that the data set used to train the “hotness” filter is its own, not a public data set.

Due to this problem, FaceApp has temporarily changed the name of the offending feature from “Hot” to “Spark”. But despite this problem, the FaceApp is still adding around 700,000 users per day.

What’s The Reason Behind FaceApp’s Popularity?

Photography has become one of the favorite things people love to do in their time when they are out. Thus, a lot of popular photo editing apps are being developed to give it a better touch.

Ever since Instagram, the trend of clicking pictures and uploading on social media has started. Today, people seek apps that provide photo editing on-the-go.

If you take any top photo editing app such as Prisma or MSQRD, they provide instant photo transformation features in their app. Now, there can be two types of photo editing apps that can be developed.

One is that enhances users’ images and other is that can add certain effects to make photos fun such as memes, stickers, and so on.

Now, no matter what type of photo editing app you want to make, but if you’re looking for creating a mobile app that goes viral like FaceApp and Prisma, your app must offer a unique entertainment. For example, in your photo video apps development of FaceApp clone, you can add gamification effects which can be achieved via a variety of rewards like collectables and badges on the leaderboard.

The idea of gamification is simple and profitable. In your FaceApp clone, you could offer similar selfie features, in addition, to build digital rewards into your app for your real life efforts, your users will be motivated to use the FaceApp clone more often.

However, when building a FaceApp clone, it is of utmost importance that you hire mobile app developers that have experience in developing such complex photo editing apps which include the implementation of Artificial Intelligence.

Similarly, if you’ve decided to build a selfie photo editor app, hiring a mobile app development company that has experience of building mobile apps in the same category. Not only such outsourcing partner add value to your FaceApp Clone, but they can also help to make it viral and rank on the top list.

In case, if you still have any query or confusion regarding social media photo apps development or social media networking apps, how to patent app idea, then you can get in touch with us through our contact us form. One of our sales representatives will revert to you as soon as possible. The consultation is absolutely free of cost!

Author Bio

Designation: iOS Team Lead

Hitesh Trivedi is an iOS Team Lead at Space-O Technologies. He has over 9 years of experience in iOS app development. He has guided to develop over 100 iPhone apps with unique features and functionalities. He has special expertise in Swift and Objective-C.